Archive for August, 2016

I’m not much of a spring cleaner. I’m more of a fall cleaner. This time of year feels buzzy with excitement and possibility. There’s a fresh sense of renewal, energy and optimism. I find it the perfect time to start gearing for what’s coming by making physical — and mental — space for all that good juju to come to fruition.

One of the ways I prepare for success is by purging, regrouping and organizing. Below are a few activities you might to consider starting now as well.

Organizing Emails. I’m an Outlook user. Personally, I like using folders to store and organize emails. The search feature fails to find mail I’m looking far too often to be a reliable method. So what I do is create folders under the Personal Folders/Saved Files section rather than in my Inbox area. The only emails I am a packrat about are those to and from clients. I give each client a folder and under each client, I create subfolders for each month. This has proven to be a lifesaver on more occasions than I can count.

Deleting or Archiving Old Emails. Around the end of the year, I go through my list of folders and archive those of clients with whom I am no longer working. I keep six months of current client folders and archive the rest.

Taking Stock of Your Online Documents. Do a quick run-through of your document files and folders and see where you can better organize, consolidate and purge.

Cleaning Out the Supply Closet. I’m sort of an organizing freak so this is something I enjoy doing periodically. Supply areas are places where we tend to put “stuff” and forget about it. Clean out the old, recycle, give away extra or old equipment to someone who can use it, and create new space (physically and energetically) for the new year with a clean slate.

Streamlining Hardcopy Files. Even with an online business where just about everything is on the computer, there is still a lot of paper in my life. I turn most of that into PDF and store online with everything else. I’ve also gone entirely electronic billing and online bill pay. However, paper is still a fact of life. There are just some things that are easier to read when they are printed out. Scanning printed materials to turn them into PDFs does create an extra job that you might not have time for, and sometimes it’s just not a practical or worthwhile effort. So for the paper that I do keep, I have five different hanging folder filing sections:
Green – ClientsBlue – Tax, Licensing and Financial/BankingRed – Accounts Payable

Yellow – Employees/Contractors/Subcontractors

Clear – Subject files (miscellaneous). For those folders that deal with date ranges, this is a good time to add a new folder for the coming year. For example, say you have a file for bank statements and you keep these in a folder marked with the current year. Now is the time to create new folders for the coming year and stick them in the file. Then at the end of the year, when you are pulling out old files (such as old clients you no longer work with), you can also pull out all your 2016 folders for storage and you’ll already have the new 2017 folders ready to go.

Add some to-dos and automated reminders for December & January to your calendar to revisit your start of the new year tasks.

A new colleague who was having trouble finding her first client reached out to me the other day.

Many of you coming up have the same questions and challenges so I thought it would be helpful to share our conversation. (I’ll call this colleague “Jane” to protect her anonymity.)

JANE: Do you have any posts on marketing. Specifically article marketing?

ME: Not per se, because it’s really not the most productive effort if you’re doing it in a general way. Writing articles specifically for your target market is more what I talk about. What are you trying to do or looking for with article marketing? If you can elaborate, I may be able to give you some better direction. PS: You can find all my blog categories on the right sidebar of my blog.

JANE: Target market… well I am pretty diverse in my administrative tasks that I don’t really have a target market. I suppose that currently I am a generalized admin. Would love to have a target market, just not sure what that might be right now. I am geared toward graphic design/web building, but… again that can be for anyone. 🙂

ME: Graphic design and web design are different professions/businesses. Are we talking about the administrative support business or the design business (because they aren’t the same thing)? You probably first want to get clear about what business you mean to be in. Until you do that, you’re going to struggle with finding clients. That’s because if you don’t know intentionally/consciously what business you intend to be in, you can’t expect clients to understand what you do either, and there’s no way for them to see or hear you. It also sounds like you haven’t downloaded my free guide on How to Choose Your Target Market. Deciding on a target market is one of the most important first steps in a business.

JANE: (Downloads free target market guide and comes back a little while later.) Well, let me clarify. Those are my interests, but after briefly looking at your guide, it has settled that I would like to work with realtors. Reason being, for one they can afford me. And I can still do the other computer stuff I like: working with websites and designing stuff. However, I have no experience in the field other than I know a realtor who is really successful. Any suggestions on how to break the ice on a field I am not totally familiar with?

ME: That’s great! Doesn’t matter if you have experience with them or not. You can research and learn. In fact, I always tell people, make it your goal to always be learning your chosen target market and what their business is all about and what work is involved in running it almost as if you were going into that business yourself. Because the more you know and understand them, the more you will know what their common needs, goals and challenges are, how you can best support them and how to craft your solutions and offerings geared specifically to their needs and interests.

It also doesn’t matter what your administrative skills are. General is a misnomer. Don’t use that term or terms like boring and mundane and the like in describing what you do. Words like that devalue the very vital and important work we do and in turn makes clients devalue it as well. Administrative skill and sensibility can be applied to any target market. Plus we’re all always growing and improving our skills. So that’s the the angle you want to be looking at things from. The more you learn your target market, the more you’ll know which skills will be need to be applied, honed or acquired. I have blog posts that answer all of your questions. I invite you to explore the blog and settle in for some reading. I think you’ll find it quite illuminating and helpful. Here are a few to start with: